One arrives and one departs :(
Posted: 12 Jul 2010, 13:27
My joy at becoming a great uncle last week was tempered by losing my own uncle Ted to cancer yesterday.
Please excuse me but this just seemed to be an apt place for me to ramble as Ted was a very keen aviation enthusiast.
It's amazing how little I knew about his life until I started to chat more with him after he was diagnosed with myeloma last year.
Even now I'm not 100% certain about the facts but now I have no more chances to talk.
As a young man he did his national service with 500 sqn at West Malling (and Malta) - Meteors, not sure what mark, but one had a blue tail.
The rest of his working life was at Heathrow, with BEA and BA, finally retiring about 10 years ago as a chief flight planning officer. He did mention something about G-APEX being one of his favourites, there was a model of it in his lounge.
He loved flying (but never became a pilot), hot air ballooning, pretty girls (always charmed the nurses) and classic racing cars & racing and died peacefully just before the british grand prix.
Please excuse me but this just seemed to be an apt place for me to ramble as Ted was a very keen aviation enthusiast.
It's amazing how little I knew about his life until I started to chat more with him after he was diagnosed with myeloma last year.
Even now I'm not 100% certain about the facts but now I have no more chances to talk.
As a young man he did his national service with 500 sqn at West Malling (and Malta) - Meteors, not sure what mark, but one had a blue tail.
The rest of his working life was at Heathrow, with BEA and BA, finally retiring about 10 years ago as a chief flight planning officer. He did mention something about G-APEX being one of his favourites, there was a model of it in his lounge.
He loved flying (but never became a pilot), hot air ballooning, pretty girls (always charmed the nurses) and classic racing cars & racing and died peacefully just before the british grand prix.
